about

Midnight basketball may not have been invented in Chicago, but the City of Big Shoulders—home of Michael Jordan and the Bulls—is where it first came to national prominence. And it’s also where Douglas Hartmann first began to think seriously about the audacious notion that organizing young men to run around in the wee hours of the night—all trying to throw a leather ball through a metal hoop—could constitute meaningful social policy. Organized in the 1980s and ’90s by dozens of American cities, late-night basketball leagues were designed for social intervention, risk reduction, and crime prevention targeted at African American youth and young men. In Midnight Basketball, Hartmann traces the history of the program and the policy transformations of the period, while exploring the racial ideologies, cultural tensions, and institutional realities that shaped the entire field of sports-based social policy. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the book also brings to life the actual, on-the-ground practices of midnight basketball programs and the young men that the programs intended to serve. In the process, Midnight Basketball offers a more grounded and nuanced understanding of the intricate ways sports, race, and risk intersect and interact in urban America.

About The Author

Douglas Hartmann is professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

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Table of Contents

Preface Acknowledgments

One / Introduction: At the Intersection of Sports, Race, and Risk Two / The Midnight Innovation Three / An Unlikely and Revealing Consensus Four / A Commercial for Neoliberal Social Policy Five / Breakdown and Fallout: The Symbolic Politics of the 1994 Crime Bill Six / Remodeling Sport-Based Prevention Seven / Prevention in Practice: A Field Study (with Darren Wheelock) Eight / They Got Game: Lessons and Reflections from the Bottom Up Nine / Conclusion: In the Light of Midnight

Methodological Appendix: The Notion of an Emergent Case Study

Notes References Index

Editorial Reviews

“Hartmann, in this outstanding work of scholarship, unearths the significance of midnight basketball, not merely as a racially coded sporting activity addressing social intervention, risk management, and crime intervention issues in impoverished urban communities, but also as a subject of neoliberal policy that has effected, and will continue to effect, millions of disadvantaged people in America. Through his thorough analysis of politics, history, race, and culture in sports, Hartmann demonstrates how an interdisciplinary approach can provide unparalleled insights about the deeply-rooted relationship between sports and society in America.”